NTSB: Plane aborted landing, hit utility pole

THOMSON, Ga. — Authorities have identified an Augusta surgeon as being among five people killed in the crash of a private jet in eastern Georgia.

McDuffie County Coroner Foster Wiley said Thursday that Dr. Steven Roth, a vascular surgeon who worked for a medical practice called the Vein Guys, died in the crash Wednesday.

The coroner says two women — Lisa Volpitto and Kim Davidson — were also identified among the dead. It was not immediately known if they worked with Roth. But Dr. Stephen Davis of the practice's clinic in Nashville, Tenn., said four other Vein Guys employees were with Roth on the flight.

The coroner says two others who died have not yet been identified.

Investigators say the jet aborted its landing and struck a 60-foot utility pole.

The plane with seven people aboard had departed from John Tune Airport in Nashville, Tenn., Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said. It crashed at Thomson-McDuffie Regional Airport, about 30 miles west of Augusta, she said.

Bodies of the five people who died have been taken to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation lab in Decatur for autopsies, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said Thursday.

Assistant County Fire Chief Stephen Sewell told the Augusta Chronicle that the two survivors were a pilot and a passenger. But he provided no additional information about those aboard.

A brush fire flared near the crash scene, and witnesses reported power outages that prompted a utility to send workers to the site, the newspaper reported.